Garmin Forerunner 10 Review

The Garmin Forerunner 10 is the cheapest and simplest Garmin running watch out there today. So, is it for you?

Simple

The forerunner 10 is a very straightforward and simple GPS watch – it doesn’t blind you with features and is really easy to use. At the start of your run, you click the top right button on the watch and it starts acquiring your location. Once it knows where you are, you just click that same button to start the timer. It then displays your time and distance on the screen. Clicking the down button shows your calories and pace. At the end of each mile it flashes up your mile time and beeps and when you finish your run it saves to the device and gives you a summary. It also stores records for your fastest ever mile and longest run.

How long does it take to locate your position?

On my forerunner 205 I would often be stood outside for a few minutes trying to get it to pick up my location. It was frustrating and sometimes very cold. The forerunner 10 takes about 1 minute the first time, but then only around 10 seconds subsequently if you’re in roughly the same place as last time. This is a great improvement compared with the 205.

Pace

The ‘pace’ feature, showing how fast you’re running at any given time, has been next to useless on my other garmin watches, I just ended up ignoring it as it jumped from 10 minute miles to 6 minute miles whilst I kept a constant pacing. Somehow, the forerunner 10 seems to fix this problem. I clicked through to pace accidentally to see that it was holding steady and seemed correct – I was amazed as I slowed, then sped up – to see that it followed my pace consistently. I don’t know how they fixed this, but they have!

Garmin Connect

As with all forerunners, if the device itself doesn’t give you enough information, simply plug it into your computer and visit garmin connect to upload your runs and see loads of information, including the gradients of your runs, how hills affect your speed, where you went too fast / slow, etc etc. There’s so much data to be had and analysed and it’s quite nice to be able to share this with some of your running friends at times. I generally only use it when I’ve got lost on a run to see where I went! But when I’m in more serious training, I will look at this in detail.

Battery Life

One thing I really like about the forerunner 10 is that you can use it as a normal watch without looking like you’ve got a personal organiser from the 80’s strapped onto your arm. The battery life supports this too, in non-GPS mode it will last for 5 weeks, in ‘run’ mode it only lasts for around 5 hours however. This is fine for most people, but it’s important to note that if you’re doing longer distance events such as ironman or some ultra marathons then this isn’t going to cut it.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a cheap GPS solution for running with then this is the answer. It just works – distance, speed, pace, time are all recorded along with calories and some “high score” style records. It fits nicely, is small, and can be used as a normal watch.